post 1

We have learned many things this past week. We learned from average speed to instantaneous speed, also we learned derivatives and their formulas. And within these things we have learned I understande some where on the other side I am having some problems with some.


The thing I understand the best is how to take derivatives of some different things. The reason is that the formulas on the derivatives are not hard to understand. One of the formulas is the product rule. This rule is one of the easiest to me. It is because you just follow the formula and its easy algebra. All you do is write the first take the derivative of the second and add that to where you write the second and take the derivative of the first. Also the derivatives any number. This is easy because the derivative of any number is equal to 0. Another thing is to take a derivative of anything with an x raised to a number. All that has to be done is multiply the coefficient by the exponent and then subtract the exponent by one. An example of this is 3x^3+4x^2-5x-5. The derivative is 9x^2+8x-5.

Also I understand how to do the average speed and instantaeous speed even though I did not really understand this at all at the beginning. The reason I started to understand this is because i realize that average has to do with over a time period and slope and instantaneous is has to do with now. This helps me do these problems.

One thing i do not understand fully is how to simplify a derivative of something like 1/3 x -^{3 .} The reason is that i dont know how fix it when you have to make a fraction to get rid of the negative exponent.

Also I am having some problems with taking the derivative of a number to the square root, cube root, fourth root, etc. I can start it off but can't ever finish it correctly.